When 11-year-old Kyla Middleton stepped onstage Friday to sing a duet of the Beatles’ classic “Imagine” with Greek tenor Mario Frangoulis, the bright lights shining on her cast a different glow than the lamps lining the streets she and her family once lived on.
Middleton was invited to perform with other local, formerly homeless musicians and poets alongside recording artists like Natalie Merchant at Give Us Your Poor, a concert hosted by Help the Homeless at the Strand Theater in Dorchester.
Instead of spare change and crumpled dollar bills in her hat, Middleton received a $20,000 scholarship to use for college to pursue her music passion.
“She has given hope to so many people to better themselves and come out of a given situation,” Frangoulis, a Julliard School graduate, said of Middleton as he presented her with the scholarship. “Sometimes you have no choice. . . . The people who have to leave their homes . . . 99 percent of the time it’s actually people who are very smart, very talented, very artistic.”
As Middleton’s younger brothers entertained the crowd by dancing through the aisles, Grammy-nominated “Mighty Sam” McClain and his funky blues band played a rendition of “Amazing Grace” and received a standing ovation.
Celebrities’ video submissions between sets urged attendees to fight homelessness.
“We don’t have to wait for a cure to be discovered or hope the scientists will figure it out in the future,” said Jon Bon Jovi, who contributed to a CD featuring Boston-area homeless musicians earlier this year, in a video. “This is right now.”
“We’re not radicals, screaming radicals, [by] talking about affordable housing,” said actor Danny Glover in another submission. “We’re not radicals, screaming radicals, talking about healthcare. We’re not screaming radicals talking about education that services our children. There’s nothing radical about [combating poverty] – that’s human.”
Give Us Your Poor founder and executive director John McGah said he hopes the event becomes a citywide tradition.
“It’s the first, but we hope to do more like it in different places,” McGah said. “If you ever take a walk around Boston around 9 o’clock at night when’s it’s cold and dark, you’ll find a homeless person there, and we’re trying to give them some help to find shelter.”
Organizations like Cradles to Crayons, which provides clothing and school supplies to children, showed up to piggyback on the generosity of concertgoers, said David Karp, marketing director at software company Ipswitch, which helps the group with its fundraising.
“We’re kind of concentrating on socks and underwear today, but we got some books, got a backpack,” Karp said. We need everything,”